This invention relates to methods and apparatus for making stators for electric motors and similar machines such as generators. Although the invention is described in the context of its application to electric motor stators, it will be understood that it is equally applicable to other types of stators wherein stator coil leads are connected to one or more terminal receptacles.
Modern stators often have more than one coil portion wound on each stator pole. The start and finish lead wires extending from these coil portions must be connected to terminals mounted on stator terminal boards, which boards are typically located on the stator end faces. In the stator manufacturing process, the lead wires extending from one or more coil portions wound on each pole of a stator core at the completion of the winding operation are temporarily anchored in grippers located, for instance, on pallets associated with the stator cores. The stator and pallet assemblies are transferred to a separate lead termination station upon leaving the winding station. A method and apparatus for accomplishing such temporary lead anchoring is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,997,138, issued Mar. 5, 1991.
At the lead termination station, the start and finish lead wires extending from the coil portion leads are connected to the appropriate terminal receptacles located on the stator terminal board. Modern stator designs frequently require that the lead wires be connected to multiple terminals, so that the lead wires follow different paths when routed through the several terminals. For some simple configurations of the terminals on the stator terminal board, the lead wires may be connected to the terminals by simple mechanical devices. However, the need for increasingly complex lead wire connection patterns exceeds the ability of presently known devices to automatically establish these connections.
Previously known devices for performing terminal lead connections, such as those described in Pearsall U.S. Pat. No. 4,074,418 and Reiger, Jr. U.S. Pat. No. 4,000,764, are typified by the complicated structures required to perform even simple terminal connections. Modification of such previously known machines to enable more complex lead wire connections would be precluded because of the relatively small working area presented by the stator end face.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of this invention to provide methods and apparatus for automatically connecting temporarily anchored start and finish leads of coil portions to terminals located at various positions and orientations on the stator terminal board.
It is a further object of this invention to provide methods and apparatus for effecting complicated connections of coil portion leads to terminals located on a stator terminal board wherein different wire lead paths are used for the several leads.
It is still a further object of this invention to provide methods and apparatus for effecting complicated connections of coil portion leads to terminals located on a stator terminal board wherein a single wire lead is connected to more than one terminal.
It is another object of this invention to provide a very compact apparatus for effecting complicated connections of coil portion leads to terminals located on a stator terminal board.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide an apparatus for connecting lead wires extending from coil portions to terminals mounted on a stator terminal board where the apparatus can be easily adjusted for use on a variety of stator sizes, stator terminal board shapes and terminal patterns.